A Volunteer Receives An RFID Chip Implant Live at MWC 2019

A man volunteered to have a chip inserted under his skin live on stage during a presentation at the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2019) in Barcelona. Rough cut (no reporter narration) | Photo by: Gold Coast Bulletin.

One of the volunteers, Edgar Pons said he decided to have an RFID chip implanted under his skin because it contained credentials to open the door to his house.

Reuters quoted him, saying; “It is super, for me, very useful, because I have an automatic house,” he said, adding he was further motivated by the fact he could “withdraw it very easily, simply making a little cut and pressing it.”

As Pons was undergoing the procedure, Alex Rodriguez Vitello, a physicist, engineer, curator and explorer at Barcelona-based technology company Alpha, said;

“The chip is the size of a grain of sand or two and it’s covered in a material that is biocompatible so our body doesn’t degrade it over time.”

During the presentation at the MWC 2019 — organized by Spanish bank Sabadell, a man named Pau who had already been fitted with a chip, made a payment by placing his smartphone over the skin covering the chip.

“(What) we have been seeing now is what the future of payments could be,” said Anna Puigoriol, a financial services manager at Sabadell.

Today, business and companies all over the world are trying to promote a cashless economy. From pushing use of credit/debit cards to mobile money to smartphone digital wallets, among other to now an RFID chip.